White box

Astral mess

Teachers woke up first and called an ambulance while all the other kids got up one after another. They asked them to wait, but it wasn't easy to control a panicking crowd of 60, some kid's parents got here even before the ambulance and Bill's mom was among those, so - Bill and Timothy (+ Xena) sat in the back of Lydia's car as she would personally take care of matters.

"Was there some gas leak?" She asked in the car, looking half-way set off by those teachers.

Bill didn't reply to that, but he added: "It didn't get to us, though. We only pretended to sleep not to stand out."

Huh-- Lydia pressed on the brakes, looking back. "Why did you contact me so late then? Do you know how worried I was seeing all those panicking parents running past me?"

"Sorry," Bill said.

"Ok, but why the heck would you need to blend in? Did you two cause it?" Lydia asked with a frown.

"No," Marcus replied. It had been Xena putting them to sleep, it wasn't them. "But wouldn't they think it was if we were the only two unaffected."

Lydia let out a breath, that was true. "So - you will now tell me not to take you to the hospital?"

Both Marcus and Bill nodded.

Lydia turned around to face the front. Restarting the car. "Rejected."

"I could cause her memories to become vague about the parents panicking part, if that would help?" Xena offered.

Marcus shook his head. That would be too short term, if Xena did that, then it would still eventually come up. It wasn't like many people already lacked the knowledge of him being odd, might as well first try to see if there wasn't another way to get Lydia to cooperate.

"Uhm, could you please stop the car for just a minute," Marcus said. "I would like to show you a reason why we can't go to the hospital and I don't want the car to crash in case that shocks you."

Lydia frowned. "Tim, I think it's better if I at least stop at a parking lot," she said, as - yep, they were in the middle of a road, someone was bound to drive here soon and that would either cause annoyed braking and beeping or the very same crash Marcus tried to prevent.

It looked like she would give them a chance, at least, so Marcus nodded and a few minutes later, at a parking lot, he took out his keys, one of them had a sharp edge.

"Please watch," he said and cut his finger. The wound healed right away in front of a shocked looking Lydia.

"That's not a trick, is it?" Lydia asked.

"If you cut your own finger, I can heal it too," Marcus said while Bill had reached out a wet wipe to clean off the blood from Tim's hand.

And Lydia did, using a sharp edge of a card. Only to look at her own now painless, yet bloody finger in wonder.

"So whatever got those kids, there's none of that in you two?" Lydia asked after letting out a long breath. Bill had passed her a wet wipe so she cleaned off the blood as well.

Marcus and Bill nodded.

"That would be suspicious as heck, yeah," Lydia said, then added. "I mean, I don't mind just taking you home and being called a careless mother, but what if that stuff those other kids got, uhh--"

"There's nothing to find," Marcus said. Except maybe an aether trace and a small missing bit of aether, but that would be something suspicious for the seeing side people, who, as far as Marcus figured, would try to swipe it under the rug.

Lydia rolled her eyes, coming to her own conclusions, and turned the car around. "Where do I go, then?" She asked.

"Tharurun's temple please," Marcus asked. Not because he meant to show Lydia even more supernatural crap, but because he was painfully hungry and those temple buns were the fastest and easiest thing to eat to help with that.